I like westerns. It used to be that my wife would find me in front of the TV and my pat response to the question, "What are you watching?" was "Whatever's on Scyfy" (used to be Sci. Fi.) But our cable package has Encore Westerns station so I am more often respond "Some Western".
Did you know that there are as many bad Westerns as there are bad Science Fiction movies?
In the church history of our nation, there are echoes of 'frontier preachers' and 'circuit riders' serving multiple towns and churches in their territories, moving by horseback to provide faith, hope, comfort, to marry and bury people. But not too many preachers show up in the middle of Westerns. Oh, they are guest stars often enough in the old TV Westerns (usually a crisis of faith or redemption needed or some such), but I'm talking about the movie Westerns.
Let me focus the discussion today. I am talking about Westerns focused in the American West. Spaghetti Westerns and Westerns that go down to Mexico have a flavor all their own, to be dealt with at another time.
There are two that come to my mind.
The one I was watching last night was "Blazing Saddles", the Mel Brooks satire on race in America. Liam Dunn plays Rev. Johnson from Rock Ridge and shows up regularly to do the invocations, prayers, benedictions, intercessions, stuff a pastor might do. It pains me to say that he is the only example I can think of where a pastor is integrated into the movie life of the Western town. Classic moment, he tries to intervene to save Sheriff Bart, the "black" sheriff about to be killed by the "white" townsfolk. He raises his bible as he intones his protest, somebody blows a hole in the Good Book, and he saunters off with the throw away line, "You're on your own..."
The rest of the time, he intersperses his 'pastoral' duties with filthy language unworthy of even a gathering of sailors.
The other movie that jumps to my mind with a preacher in the center is Clint Eastwood's "Pale Rider", where he plays a Preacher in the title role (we never catch his name). This time, he is a 'reformed' gunslinger helping out miners being oppressed by the local Mining Baron (they NEVER come off well). And the faith is fine until it is time to beat somebody up (nothing like hickory for a good axe handle), or, in the climax, when he has to go 'redeem' his gun from his safety deposit box and kill everything that moves wearing the 'bad guy' logo.
Beyond those two examples, the most I usually see of the faith in a Western is a fancy clapboard church at the end of the main drag (like in "Silverado").
"Taming the west", at least in Hollywood lore means killing off the bad guys before they can oppress or dominate the good guys. I suppose that by the time the movie gets made, when the bad guys need to be taken out, the preacher was probably already dead or driven out of town. I suppose.
The point I am trying to make is to use the genre of the Western as a reflection of much of Hollywood. Christians are the majority of this nation. Churches are the most pervasive social organizations across the country. Pastors and preachers and priests are, as a vocational class, the largest group of community leaders in the nation. But that isn't reflected in the "America" presented in the movies, or on TV, unless the religious leader falls into one of two categories.
The first is the religious 'poser'. The pedophile, murderer, drug user, drunkard, whatever is using the pastorate as cover for their 'dark side'. The second is the serious whacko, usually killing people in the name of Jesus.
And "Seventh Heaven" may just be the exception that proves the rule.
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